Joerg

IMG I took Londra to have been too young to join the Household of Death, and to have joined Humakt as soon as she could out of a sense of loss/duty - possibly to a slightly elder sibling who went that way? Not sure whether that still works well with the somewhat changed age compared to the Wyrm's Footnotes version.

The Household of Death was a group of small children (I believe the sisters of Harsaltar were ages 7 and 5) initiating to the Cult of Humakt. A number of their noble-born or retainer-born playmates joined them in this desperate measure, creating a small band of dead-eyed child heroes with terrible death powers due to this sacrifice. Equipped with unusual gifts and geases, they were a terror on the battlefield. Unless I wanted to recreate that period, I don't think I would let players play Anakin-like initiates this young, with even low two digit ages still being somewhat icky. How old was Wesley Crusher at the start of Next Generation?

Hell is an Otherworld made up of all other Otherworlds, minus a lot of energy that is bled out into the Void at the bottom. As Darkness demons, trolls have less alienation to any sort of magic, even though they seem to come mainly from the fusion of spirit and theist magics. They contributed to the Theyalan sacrificial system of magic (which became the Rune Magic that is modeled by RuneQuest, or the Feats in HeroQuest Glorantha), or learned its methods from their Heortling allies, and they are great shamans in their own right. Sorcery as practiced by the Brithini doesn't work well in the Underworld as it assumes a ready access to the Energy of the Source channeled through life energy (from the caster, or from the environment the caster taps into, or from shared magic from Invisible God worship or Brithini urban architecture). There is one school of sorcery specialized on sorcery for the Underworld, and in my thermodynamics trained imagination, these sorcerers don't tap into the energy above to disperse in the normal world, but pull energies from around them into the lowest oblivion to have that energy gradient that is required to result in magic. To the uz, this must feel exactly like digestion. When Arkat shared his knowledge of Western sorcery with them as he had practiced it as a troll, these methods may have come naturally after the initial realization. Is sorcery necessarily a part of being a Superhero? Superheroes possess the mystical Infinity rune to deal with any kind of magic, and at least in an earlier attempt to define an orthodox Eastern mystic's progress, there was exposure to the worlds of pure magic from Spirit Magic, Rune Magic, and Sorcery in which the mystic's ability to both master these by meditation and to refrain from being caught up in them was tested in the intermediate stages before approaching the face of the Ultimate. (Steps jumped over in Nysalorean illumination as my limited understanding of it tells me.) Superheroes are not orthodox mystics. They share the effects of master mystics (or True Dragons) in being able to control the magic around them, but their approach would be through Hero Plane acquisition of such powers. I don't see Harrek as having mastered any sorcerous techniques or runes, but he will have developed an innate understanding of how these affect the magical energies around him, and how to interfere with that. Jar-eel may actually have had some formal education in sorcery. Whether she relies on it to achieve her goals is a totally different question. Androgeus? Who knows.

Why do you say that? There is a slight truth to this statement, as in all modern Orlanthi magic derives from the message of the Lightbringers, whose apparently superior ways of magic and worship were adopted even by Orlanthi peoples who had found out of the slouch of the Greater Darkness trauma on their own, like the Enerali of Hrelar Amali. ALL their culture derives from the examples set by their deity. And in some places, these examples included bull riding or boar riding.

Note that Sacred Time might be slightly outside of normal Time, or as someone who is considered an expert on Time might say, wibbly-wobbly timey wimey.

I suppose that Mostali might fairly often trade some of their lesser artifacts or metals for trouble to their foes, accepting in trade whatever is offered in addition to some request that harms aldryami and/or trolls..

The Oranor folk who worship Orlanth the Bull Rider would be amused to hear this claim. Yes, they did get into contact with the Bright Empire and its precedessor, the Second Council, and they did accept Harmast and Talor when they were struggling against the monstrous things coming out of the Gate of Banir (apparently on behalf of some less enlightened local satrap of the Bright Empire), but their traditions are as old and as valid as those of the sheep Orlanthi of Kerofinela and Saird. The "Dawn Age Civilizations" map in Troll Pak shows the areas settled by Malkioni on the Neliomi Sea as being civilized. And so they were, as much as the Hykimi neighbors of theirs whose city states were at war with the Malkioni ones, until a certain Hrestol tipped the balance against these early civilized Hykimi-adjacent urban cultures. Kethaela, Kerofinela and Saird are the regions which never came into contact with the Kachisti civilization (before the Vadeli/Nidan uprising). The rest of the Genertelan Hill Barbarians may have inherited some of the Brithini urban culture, or at least of their diplomacy and speaking magic. And they may have a solar streak, too, like those horse barbarians of the Tanier Valley. The areas of influence of Kero Fin and Top of the World have quite a bit of overlap. Orlanthi descended from the Vingkotlings tend to look towards Kero Fin (and Grizly Mountain) for their magical guidance, but other people in Sylila and further west may choose to look towards Top of the World as Orlanth's birthplace and the most holy Storm Mountain in the world. (Never mind those in Umathela with their own peak in or near the Tarmo mountains.) The Heortlings split from the Second Council, leaving the rest of the Orlanthi world to their own devices, with Top of the World as their spiritual center. This may have included the Sairdite Orlanthi (Vanch, Imther, Sylila, Talastar) as well. The Dorastans went off in the direction of an urban culture we don't know much about, expect that it was respected by the Dara Happans of the Khordavu dynasty as civilized and equal partner in raising the Perfect God. Other than the Hendriki who made a fetish out of hiding in their woods, the Dawn Age and Second Age Orlanthi were a quite urbanized civilization even in Kerofinela. With the dragonfriend influences, this urbanization probably increased more, leaving behind places like Clearwine. Storm Bull, Elmal, Heler, Humakt, Valind, Pole Star, and even Argan Argar may have fought alongside the Vingkotlings and the Storm Brothers, but at best they were included in the host of the Storm Brothers, not as Storm Brothers. Many a Vingkotling demigod/hero may have actually joined the Storm Brothers, and the Star Captain founders of the Vingkotling Star Tribes may have split off that collective when they returned to their mortal kin. There may have been more than the four we know from the Dawn Survival Sites, as there may have been Vingkotling Tribes who did not survive the Greater Darkness. (Given the broken-up state of Greater Darkness Genertela, their lands may have fallen into oblivion, too, not included in Arachne Solara's Web, or at least not surfacing on her great tapestry of recovery.) Yelmalio clearly was not a Vingkotling deity. He may still have been a brother-in-arms of the Star Captains of Orlanth's sky conquest host that descended to the Surface World after ridding the Sky World of the Sky Terror and its minions. Some of the Star Deities of the Starlight Wanderers of the Arcos Valley may have been associates of Orlanth, too. Argan Argar clearly was not a Vingkotling deity, either. He seems to have been part of the Manirian boar Orlanti pantheon, though, with Aram-ya-Udram and Vathmai (or his great-grandson Lalmor) prominent Tusker-boar-riding representatives, and whatever other group the Torkani may have descended from. The human portion of the Kitori were Orlanthi, too, at the very least by culture, but many by cult as well. Esrolian Harono (the Sun Emperor) may have been the local incarnation of Yelm. It is quite possible that the Heortling Evil Emperor myth with the Contests of Dancing, Music and Magic and finally Martial Prowess took place in Esrolia and never on the Oslir, with the Iron Ram god as one of four conspirators against Murharzarm (with Verithurus(a), the Bat, and Red-Sworded Tolat/Shargash joining him) being unrelated to anything Vingkotling. We don't know whether the northern Orlanthi (bear-totem folk, Iron Ram folk who went extinct, Andam folk who went extinct, Raccoon Folk who adapted, Dog Folk who persisted) had anything to do with Harono and Ezel (as Ernalda's home) but everything with the Dara Happan Rebellus Terminus. The area outside of Marallarvus's Dome (raised against the advancing Glacier, but serving as a hide-out against the first terrible advance of Chaos, too) may have been obliterated or forgotten, leaving us with a smaller Genertela than went into the Gods War. The Hill of Gold lies smack dab in northern Orlanthi territory, and the Orlanthi there will see a different Lightfore than Elmal as their guiding light. Whether that is Harald Smith's (@jajagappa) Khelmal (see the excellent Edge of Empire book on the Jonstown Compendium, or search the Digest archives for the term Khelmal if you don't know what I am talking about) or take Balazar's Sun Dome cult. The Orlanthi who fled Hwarin Dalthippa's conquests included Pelorian Orlanthi of all the northern kingdoms - Vanchites, Imtherites, riverine Sairdites, folk from Dara Ni, Aggar, Holay. Some of these had VIngkotling roots, many others did not. The Dinacoli tribe just north of the Creek are horse-riding Orlanthi with a Yelmalio tradition (though probably without either hoplites or access to Sun Spear prior to Monrogh's revelations and innovations). At least according to a direct divination from Greg when I did research for a scenario on both sides of the Creek after the shock of there being a Cold Sun god named Elmal had hit the RQ2/RQ3 community of the middle to late nineties. Yes. Yelmalio is practiced by people whose ancestors thought that Nysalor might have been a good idea at the time, or at least not bad enough to go to war over, and surely not side by side with the trolls. The cult is practiced by elf-friends throughout Glorantha. Elmal was big previous to peaceful contact with the Dara Happans. YGWV. Their ancestors certainly worshiped the same deity in the same places before Monrogh had his revelation and led a majority of the Sun worshipers out of southern Sartar into Sun Dome County. Apparently entire clans of the Locaem, and probably a whole load of individual households from other clans. Who would have thought that within one century after the Battle of Waterloo the English would fight two major wars on the side of the French? The situation you are describing might be the aftermath of the betrayal of Jarosar (although the culprits in question have been consistently painted as not-so-loyal Elmali rather than as Yelmalians). And we know that Ernalda betrayed Orlanth Rex-in-Exile with Orlanth Niskis. Already major human heroes have pluripresence. (The two different Argraths/Garrath people may encounter might be an initial symptom of capital H herodom...) Arkat wounded himself. To me this sounds like Yelmalio took them over from Elmal, only to lose them again, leaving both without. Or "Yelmalio stealing it" might be a belated loss of the fire powers when the event horizon from Yelmalio's defeat at the Hill of Gold reached Elmal? YGWV. Certainly from mine.

Frankly, I don''t see any need to tie the Galanini horses to Nivorah. Nivorah is a place that was nurtured by the Fallen Horse Goddess (locally called Gamara) during the Anaxial Dynasty. It was the home city of Reladivus already under Murharzarm's Decapolis, but there doesn't seem to have been any horse connection yet. Reladivus was sent wandering by Umath's invasion of the sky, which happened around 70,000 YS, or 30,000 years YS before the Dismemberment of Yelm. This is practically the start of the Storm Brothers (Vadrus, Storm Bull, Ragnaglar, Huma(k)t(h) and Orlanth/Erlandus) becoming active on their own. Storm Bull was instrumental in the Fall of Hippogriff, the steed of Yamsur, the local sun of Genert's Garden, alongside Maran Gor and Zorak Zoran. Hyalor Horsebreaker tamed the wounded creature and became the first rider of horses, and his riders spread around, ultimately reaching Nivorah at some undisclosed point in the Late Golden Age or the early (pre-flood) Storm Age, as the re-founded post-flood city of Anaxial had Gamara as its nurturer. The Enerali know Galin as the birthplace of Galanin, the Sun Horse, child of Ehilm. Still a sky creature, but no hint of carnivorous tendencies or wings. Galanin fathered Eneral on the Green Lady, the founder of the four tribes of the Enerali formed by his sons, and possibly of the nomadic Galaninae led by a daughter/priestess of his separately from those four agriculture/pastoral tribes. It isn't clear whether the Enerali started out as riders, or whether that was reserved to the Galanini (who seem to be related to Yelorna and might also have had some unicorns among their priestessly nobility). At some point in the Storm Age, the secrets of Hyalor Horsebreaker seem to have reached the Enerali, as King Dan apparently already had horse riders in his kingdom in the Gray Age/at the Dawn. Galin probably has Hippoi as the horse mother, or maybe it is the Green Lady who serves as his mother (or wife, or both - deities, you know...). We don't know whether Galin also has a claim to the planet Lightfore, or whether he is solely associated with the Daystar elsewhere known as Yelm, whether as its steed or its motion through the sky. His role will have changed somehow with the Dawn, much like for the rest of the obscure Ralian pantheon. I wonder what Monrogh would have made of Reladivus Kargzant. He seems to have dealt with the Hyalor Horsebreaker folk from south of the Crossline (who had settle what had become Sartar), but that cult came with Beren and probably Ulanin, both with the epithet "the Rider". (Which might be pronounced "Hyalor"...)

According to the Kralori story of WIld Man, rather little blood, as that needed to be collected in his nethers.

Elmal and Yelmalio share a lot of myths and differ on a few. This might be a case of divine pluripresence misunderstood by the worshipers as two different deities, or this might be a case of two distinct deities sharing the same archetype (and celestial body, at least since 110 ST). For much of the Godtime, Antirius (the sedentary sun high up above the pointy huge geographical feature) and Reladivus (the horse-friendly spear guy roaming about after abandoning his southern city) have clearly separate myths, and both the cult of Yelmalio and the (former?) cult of Elmal referred to different sets from either. Elmal started out as the roving horse guy (Reladivus) but then became the Loyal Thane and remained mainly sedentary atop Kero Fin. Yelmalio too seems to have been born (or otherwise realized) sufficiently early to witness the dismemberment of Yelm and the slaying of his (half-?) brother the emperor before confronting Orlanth at the Hill of Gold. In the Greater Darkness, he may have acknowledged Orlanth's feat of keeping the rot of Chaos out of the Sky World, though, while doing his own job for his aldryami and human followers outside of the territory formerly claimed by the Anaxial Dynasty Empire, wandering from crisis to crisis. There is no basis for seeing Yelmalio sitting atop Inora's ice to illuminate the formerly Vingkotling and nascent Heortling lands of Kerofinela on both sides of the Greater Darkness. Any myth claiming this is a weak construct of over-eager syncreticism. Elmal on the other hand has few if any elf-friend features mentioned anywhere in the selection of his myths we have seen. That 110 event merged the celestial bodies of Antirius and Reladivus Kargzant and bound the latter onto the Sunpath that is tread by Lightfore. Any subsequent Lightfore cult may have had to deal with a merged deity, but they are hardly alone in that. Lodril retains the name of Yelm's originally pure Srvuali fire brother despite having merged with that Earth thing he wrestled (possibly an Earth Walker deity, a lesser Genert or a lesser Tada). The Planetary Sun Alkor and the underworld demon Shadzor merged into Shargash to overcome Umath's invasion of the skies, and yet that seems to be a deity alike to but different from Tolat. And Reladivus' northeastern brother rejoined the central sun when Umath invaded the sky, whether to warn Yelm, whether to seek pathetic shelter there, whether to be devoured by the angry father, or whether to strengthen the Sun principle by joining his lesser force to the greater one.

"Not agimori" in terms of Doraddi culture with medicine plants and all that, I'll grant you that. Not in cultic practice, either, since I guess it would be hard to worship Pamalt in the ruins of Genert's Garden. The lack of medicine plants may go a long way to explain their procreative problems, alongside with their extremely reluctant drinking. IMG they are fairly similar to some of the more primitive hunters of Tarien, if there are any men-and-a-half left among those. The only Pamaltelan men-and-a-half explicitely mentioned in the Guide live in Laskal. Agimori in terms of phenotype (to avoid that four-letter-word) still applies to them, unlike the other dark-skinned Praxians who would be of Wareran phenotype (even if of diminuitive stature), with the possible exception of the Basmoli whose ancestral migration may have started in Tarien and may have led them through Seshnela. On the other hand, I find it extremely hard to think of people with a few generations of living in the USA as German or British, regardless of their families' roots.

A valid question. What's new here: The histories of DP have added about 50% compared to King of Sartar, and have removed the weird mis-information bits. The God series from Wyrm's Footnotes has been added to slightly, even comparing to the Wyrm's Footprints best-of collection of the Footnotes by Reaching Moon Megacorp. I don't think I have seen the sixth to eight Wane texts before, and the accompanying maps are new and previously unpublished. Agrath's companions and the Sartar Magical Union bits are new. The illustrations - especially the Takenegi Stele ones in the histories, but also the mythical maps - add quite a bit. So do the genealogies. Given the rather low distribution of Wyrm's Footnotes prior to the release of the scanned versions, much of the old stuff was new to even some of the old fogeys. New to me: up to 30%. RQG is about 400 pages, RQ2 is about 100 pages - it would be fair that RQG contains 70-80% of RQ2, but hardly vice versa. Some of the expanded descriptions of the skills may have come from RQ3, but who cares? The skill list is similar, but has changed. Most of the lores of RQ3 are absent. RQ2 defense is absent. Separate attack/parry skills are absent. RQ3 sorcery is absent - there are no skills for intensity, duration, range, or multispell, the only thing in common is that spells are standalone magic skills. Also absent from RQ3 are the easy algorithms that would calculate skill bonuses, hit points etc., instead we regress to the break point tables from RQ2. While the SIZ effect on hit points in RQ3 may have been problematic, in RQ3 I never had to look up location hit points if I knew the general hit points. They were 2/5, 1/3, 1/4 or 1/6 of the total hit points, and easy to remember. The rules are illustrated, with the illustrations actually relating to the rules or to Vasana's story (which has replaced Rurik's and Cormac's stories). Vasana's story provides background integration. Rules for augmenting are new. (There may be too many of these rules, making something that should be simple rather fiddly, but...) Runes are used for other purposes than illustration. (And illustrations are used for other purposes than mere decoration.) Spirit Magic and Rune Magic spell lists may have the least changes (if you add the spell lists from Cults of Prax and parts of RQ3 Gods of Glorantha). Any Bestiary stuff is absent from this book. Shamanism is completely new. There may be some cut and paste in this book, but less than 25%, and maybe as much re-written from scratch repeats of earlier editions. Which is ok, otherwise this game would not have been called RuneQuest or be seen in its continuity. So, more than 50% NEW stuff. There is a bit more cut and paste here, from the RQ3 Elder Races Book and the RQ3 Glorantha Bestiary, including some art. The short forms of the cults resembles the RQ3 Gods of Glorantha short forms, and do provide continuity while addressing necessary changes due to the new ways of the rules. (And I won't imagine the howls if there was less continuity with many of these cults.) There are a few newer creatures here that have never seen any RuneQuest treatment, but most of the old ones are covered. There is a lot more of cut and paste here than in the rules book, but then why change texts that were better than just adequate in earlier editions? There are illustrations. Lots of those, all on topic (unlike say the Mongoose color vignettes), most of them new. Because colors... I'll agree to your earlier estimate, with 30% new text, 95% new illustrations, and possibly 40% text taken over verbatim. Something most old fans will be able to do themselves, or take from other players (as in the Jonstown Compendium on Drivethru). Produced by a mix of new and established writers for RQ, with the usual holes banged into canon by things the authors thought would be cool or necessary for their concept. GM Adventures Pack: about 30% old stuff, including a nostalgic defense of Apple Lane, against a less weird opposition this time. And some denting of canon. I thought I had an idea who was king of the Colymar after Leika, but now I have no idea any more. Luckily, whoever it was got eaten by the dragon, so bygones. TSR: two new mini-campaigns, one elaboration of a cameo from Elder Secrets (the aldryami grove) put into greater Gloranthan context. Some more gazetteer-like stuff, with a few previously published entries (e.g. Scholar Wyrm) put more firmly into context, quite a few cultic practices mentioned but never explained. If this many Beastmen worship Arachne Solara, what does that mean for player character ones? Factually wrong statements in the titular scenario backstory, but a wholly unexpected twist of what used to be some dry historical event. The Lost Valley is a weird insert into the Grazelands, but works fine if you regard it as a Hidden Green-like location that requires certain entry conditions to have avoided Grazer domination/oppression for the time of its existence. Another Apple Lane-vibes starting location or adoptive home base with a little bit of everything. Urvantan is the sample sorcerer for this edition of sorcery, and a lot more consistent and believable than his predecessor in that role, Arlaten from Strangers in Prax. Unfortunately, this doesn't pan out that well for his sorcerous opposition. PP: Other than small bits from previous gazetteers or HQ-era NPC descriptions, almost all new. Including the first scenario playing in Prax mainly outside of the Zola Fel Valley, a radical departure from previous treatments of Prax other than Biturian's Travels. The amount and quality of the material on the Jonstown Compendium was not foreseeable when these adventure books were produced, which means they were necessary. With the JTC having taken off like it did, and the quality quite professional in many offerings and otherwise written by GMs for GMs, the subsequent lapse in Adventure production is a good decision, as it would take quite a bit of effort to outshine the community content. Things are in the pipeline supporting the metaplot, and have been there for years, including essential setting books like Pavis or Troll Pack (other than reprints of RQ2 Troll Pak). Illustrations: some new, some reprinted (and at least one wrongly reprinted, showing the wrong Chan sister in the Colymar Adventures), many Colymar worthies repeated in TSR. Mainly utilitarian, with some rules updates/improvements vs. the core rules, making it a necessary GM source at the more rules-lawyery tables. RQ3 Book of Magic (DeLuxe box) had maybe half of these (mainly spirit magic), RQ3 Gods of Glorantha provided many of the rune spells (and imagine those would have been missing), but there seems to be a lot more community-based improvement on the descriptions. The preview of the Cults Books, with 90% of this content to be found again in the cults books. Shorter rules, even slightly shorter than the very concise RQ2 - something RQG needed. Badly. (Still way too many skills, but a much less intimidating if in the long run less practical character sheet.) Gloranta introduction: before the Jonstown material, a whole lot more than RQ2 ever offered, but necessarily (next to) nothing new to people familiar with the world. For those, we get an overview description of Jonstown, though not hardly on the detail level of Pavis (which still is way less than Chaosium published in Thieves World or the Midkemia Press reprint City of Carse). For old fogeys, Book 2 has the most to offer, as adventures are a fleeting pleasure. (And one of the Book 4 adventures gives you a chance to fight senescent trollkin already in print since the beginning of RuneQuest in the same cave system.) The pregens from the Quickstart repeated again, presented a lot more accessibly now, focussing on what they are about rather than giving the whole skill list. If the two versions were consistent with one another, one could give the players both... For something so dryly titled, maybe 20% previously printed (and a bit of that in the RQG rules book). Perhaps the most innovative of the new offerings. There were a few freebies that you left unmentioned, with the Rattling WInd a preview for Pegasus Plateau, the Whispering Caves possibly too obscure to find. There is a distinct lack of such downloadable freebies right now, which should be amended in order to lessen the feeling of being abandoned. The four parts of the Cults Book feel to me like half a publication after three years of anytime soon now the Red Book is out.. But hey, I can hardly keep up with the Jonstown publications I did buy. Release dates for everything before W&E are difficult because pdf preceded print, skewing the perceptions of the fan-base, which may have contributed to the feeling of being underfed by the company itself (while able to be gorging yourself on community content beyond what even the most fanatical GM can run while things come out, although less so if you can only read from dead aldryami). As a mostly digital customer these days, having to wait for paper to be shipped is annoying. Priority can't be given out even-handedly by its nature. Attracting new players, new GMs and new writers is necessary to remain to be able to pay those new artists recruited by Chaosium. Refusal to acknowledge the volume and overall quality of the community content program is weird. My fellow God Learner host Ludovic has been putting out a weekly newsletter covering the scene for more than two years now, and there are things to communicate. Other than D&D, which game/setting has this coverage? Finally, official and consistent rules for HeroQuesting in RuneQuest. Once those are out, I can predict the shouts about "When do we get ready-to-play Heroquesting modules?" Playtesting and refining the playtesting is something professional game publishers are supposed to do. DIY publishers can put forth "here's how I did it" and call that tested. While Jeff and others have written and GMed heroquests routinely for themselves, it is hard to market a game that requires the author to run it. (Jonathan Tweet's Over The Edge game has been accused of that...)

On the other hand, Orlanth worshippers inside the clan or tribe are welcome. We are talking about these cults coexisting in kinship groups, and we know that this happens quite a lot. Wrong. If Praxians find Sartarites in their lands, they may exchange a careful greeting to find out whether these strangers have any claim for hospitality and mutual benefit. Otherwise Biturian Varosh would never ever have reached Pimper's Block. Waha cultists are not a monolithic entity anyway. Your phrasing is misleading in reducing these people to their cults. If the Waha cultists are this belligerent, what do the Daka Fal cultists and the Eiritha cultists in their clans do? What do the Yelmalio cultists in their clans do? With all due respect I call this reduction to cults bollocks. Again, context. The tribal butchers will be welcome because most people love some meat in their diet. Praxian mercenaries serving as guards to a trader will receive all due hospitality. Praxian raiders will be fought off. Your picture of a "shoot first, have the shaman interrogate the ghosts" Glorantha bears little similarity to mine. A ritualized (and plain silly) rivalry that needs to be observed only by rune lords (and I strongly doubt that Argrath and Rurik go through these steps everytime they meet). The deities? The passion play characters in ritual re-enactment (the Gloranthan commedia dell arte version of the myths)? The average cultists? How much do you personally hate the Germans, given that your parents or grandparents went to war against them? Orlanth tried to war over Ernalda's favor. His "suit" was summarily dismissed. He learned better. True, his last contest with Yelm was on the brutal side, but that was a personal duel, not a war. These people share the same clans. They are kin. It is not a tribe of Yelmalio worshipers and a tribe of Orlanth worshipers meeting. Orlanthi will tolerate in-laws. Maybe grudgingly. Have you seen the myths about hospitality, about the foreigner wedding? Harmast Barefoot claimed Bere the Rider and his Lightfore deity as an ancestor. So has Daysenerus, the Cold Sun god of the Dara Happan general's Vanchite charioteer who was revealed at the Battle of Night and Day. Daysenerus was an Orlanthi sun deity, explained by the Dara Happans as an emanation of Antirius or some such nonsense, or possibly as a Rinliddic protector deity rather than from Nivorah. That's assuming that the Dara Happan influence was hostile, which it wasn't. The Sun Dome Templars played a decisive role in the clean-up after the Tax Slaughter of 578, and their cult became a popular choice for people wishing to fight Darkness. Not Elmal, but Yelmalio Tharkantus, or whatever the name was. And this cult had an inheritance from the interaction with the Dara Happans in the Bright Empire, the gift of the Sunspear to their High Priests. And, as it happened, the Yelmalians and the Old Day Traditionalist Orlanthi found themselves on the same side against the EWF for quite a while. Brothers in arms against the uprising dragonfriends. Only after the dragonfriends had co-opted Orlanth and Yelm into their scheme did the Yelmalians serve them as mercenaries, and that only until Karvanyar threw out the Dragon Sun Emperor. When his son Sarenesh divided the lands he ruled after marriage to the daughter of Shah Nadar the Avenger among his sons, Saird was given to Verenmars, a heroic king who had the allegiance of the Dog Orlanthi and the Sun Dome Temples. Balazar came from this region. From their Elmali clans? Much like any Orlanthi who accepted the Seven Mothers in Saird was exiled from theirs, creating marauding bands of Seven Mother cultist bandits terrorizing the Provinces (obviously not). Your argumentation sounds dangerously like the real world unthinking "they who aren't my allies are my enemies" hogwash that dominates divisive politics all over the world.

The Gods War had many gods defending territory against the incoming Chaos. One of the more successful defenses was Orlanth's defense of the Sky World, from which he cast out the Sky Terror. We also know that the Gods War Lunar Empire (of the Artmali) turned to Chaos deities for aid in its later phase. These Lunar fellows would have known a back door into the realms of their ancestress Veldara, I suppose, and may have been led by an aspect or avatar of the Red One (Verithurusa), too. As I said, Orlanth cast Chaos out of the Sky Realm. But now the Lunar goddess has entered much of the way in, and she is more chaotic than ever. This makes me wonder how much the Gods War is old beef re-heated.

If we are looking at the old board-games, Tada is missing on the list of superheroes. Needs re-assembly, though.

One might argue that the DID share the "bound to a location" (the Upland Marsh) that dryads or nymphs have. The all-female appearance is another thing to set them apart. I have no idea whether Delecti's ability being stolen from Zorak Zoran (in WF15, a release which Jeff has recently declared as a lot less canon-adjacent than many people have made it) makes his tradition a Vivamort tradition or something else.

I talked about that with Greg, and he told me that the mixed traditions were perfectly workable, with entities from both sides of the mix part of their cult array. The misapplied mention of misapplied worship in the Hero Wars era was a badly communicated idea. Tossing out HQG with the trademark bathwater was a regrettable decision, with the Questworlds SRD taking a long time to get right, and probably little to no capacity to update older material for return to pdf/print (if only PoD). The loss of the back catalog in the Vault - however much canon may have changed - just because of the wrong trademark should not have happened, at least some digital version should have remained. If only to explain widespread fan disagreement with changes to canon.

Mainly in how they approach them magically and what senses and magical means they use to perceive them. (Even a theist's identification with a mythical entity may be based on incomplete or even faulty understanding.) Shamans who are associated with cults may take identification as their approach on the Other Side inside cult ceremonies (and quests based on these), but when acting on the Spirit Plane (or Spirit World), they act as their spirit self and approach other entities that way. (It is worth noting that one doesn't even have to be an initiate of the mythical entity whose role one takes on a heroquest - a matching passion or two might be better than a half-hearted initiatory relationship to that entity.) During the Hero Wars / HeroQuest 1 era, Greg meant to make the Three Different Otherworlds and how the difference between them gets overcome a major element of the Hero Wars, but that somehow failed to excite the majority of the fans (who still took three different types of Beast X depending on its Otherworld origin in Anaxial's Roster in stride).

The Far Place still was Yelmalio without Sunspear (and Sunspear is a great deal to the Lightfore cults). Monrogh's disciples changed that, somewhat to the anger of some of the anti-Dara Happan-minded tribesfolk there (equating Hwarin with the Empire and Moonson as high priest of Yelm).

At the Battle of Night and Day, it was the Vanchite charioteer of the Dara Happan general who suggested to call in Daysenerus, his sun god. While the general burnt out from trying to contain that deity, Palangio managed. The cult was already popular among certain Pelorian Orlanthi, and it spread all over Saird as well as into the Arcos Valley. We don't know what was Balazar's background - he was anti-EWF, or at least willing to plunder the remains of the EWF 78 years after the dragon-friends were exterminated/experienced collective Utuma. The citadel culture he established resembles Dawn Age Kerofinela (e.g. Korolstead).

Or at least that is what the Kralori say, if you trust the God Learners who equated Kralori TarnGaTha with Aether Primolt when the Eastern civilization regarded that as a local name of Yelm. The Spike always pointed towards the Source of Energies, raw energies interacting with Creation unfiltered until Aether established himself to provide some shelter from its harsh emanations only True Dragons and Elder Giants and their offspring were able to withstand. If you are into Eastern mysticism, naked Atrilith would have been what powered the earliest Life in the upper Seas, sifting downwards somewhat filtered into the deeper Sea and into Darkness.

Looks to me like the New Pavis temple to the city god, directly outside the Wall. The place you go to if you want to join or contact the Pavis Royal Guard without entering the Rubble or risk running afoul of one of its patrols.

Have you seen the javelin prices? You can get a riding horse for one of those... And yet the oldest source we have on the Sun Dome Temples says explicitey that the temples field mounted archers. They don't get any separate counters in the WBRM board game, though. I am inclined to make the Bush Children (the fast mounted archers from that game) mounted Lightfore archers, from the Bush Range that was formerly part of Old Tarsh, which makes them Yelmalian. I read the absence of separate horse archer counters in the Sun Dome County military as these outriders being attached to the phalanxes as designated skirmishers keeping enemy skirmishers off the flanks.

Tidal marshes can coexist with pieces of bedrock jutting out. IMG the isles of Choralinthor Bay have bedrock, some aplenty. The green in the AAA maps is misleading - all it tells us is that the area is less than 300 m (1000 ft) elevation. All of Denmark would appear in this green, and Denmark has several places with chalk bedrock cliffs facing the sea, and rather impressive moraines elsewhere. For reasons of cartographic legibility, small portions jutting above these 1000 ft won't be marked on a map of the scale of the AAA, either. A thin ridge or a peak at 1200 ft might not be shown on a map of that scale. That said, I would be astonished if the eastern part of the Rightarm Isles had elevations above 80 meters above average tidal level. Everything up to that would be fair game, and given the fact that the Zoo survived the Devastation of the Vent mostly intact suggests that it sits on a ledge of bedrock or a lot of sediment more than 10 meters above sea level.

Late to the party, but: A trickster hallucinating an air bubble around his head can breath whatever there is around him as if it was air, and could even give the mouth to mouth treatment to others and share that breathing ability. Anyone else inside that bubble would still suffer from whatever environment there is.